Way back when I was working toward a degree in economics, The Economist was once an essential recommended subscription whether you were interested in politics, economics, and/or political economy. I continued my college subscription of The Economist for years thereafter and enjoyed reading it. However, something changed and it turned to crap, which is why I dropped my subscription.

I would have expected better writing and analysis from The Economist, but, now, print media is dumbed down to nothing.

stoic wrote: Way back when I was working toward a degree in economics, The Economist was once an essential recommended subscription whether you were interested in politics, economics, and/or political economy. I continued my college subscription of The Economist for years thereafter and enjoyed reading it. However, something changed and it turned to crap, which is why I dropped my subscription.

I would have expected better writing and analysis from The Economist, but, now, print media is dumbed down to nothing.

They're more or less writing click-bait, and not just subject matter. It actually hurts their bottom line to write a longer more in-depth article because they don't get additional ad impressions for the additional time the customer spends reading it. It's just the nature of content on the web and it appears to be getting worse.

stoic wrote: Way back when I was working toward a degree in economics, The Economist was once an essential recommended subscription whether you were interested in politics, economics, and/or political economy. I continued my college subscription of The Economist for years thereafter and enjoyed reading it. However, something changed and it turned to crap, which is why I dropped my subscription.

I would have expected better writing and analysis from The Economist, but, now, print media is dumbed down to nothing.

They're more or less writing click-bait, and not just subject matter. It actually hurts their bottom line to write a longer more in-depth article because they don't get additional ad impressions for the additional time the customer spends reading it. It's just the nature of content on the web and it appears to be getting worse.

I find it interesting as their digital offerings are the same as those found in their print magazine. While modern digital publishers incentivise click-bait to maximise ad impressions, my impressions is that the Economist's main revenue is based off of subscriptions which should lend themselves towards more thoughtful analysis. It's not like they're shy of turning away visitors with their implementation of a soft-paywall so driving clicks doesn't help them much in the long run. I too have noticed a reduction in the quality of their analysis which eventually led me to cancel my subscription.